University Daily Kansan, July 24, 1980
Fantasy game fans play nights in shining armor
By WALTER THORP Staff Reporter
If you have noticed some students' tails dragon lately, it might not be the heat. It could be that their minds are in the dungeon.
The dungeon is where every fantasy comes true. You can catch a dragon by the tail, square off against a horde of orks and harpies to rescue a damsel in water or clank down to the Round Table for a tankard of ale with the knights.
An estimated half-million Americans—most of them college students—regularly live out their game called Dungeons and Dragons.
At the University of Texas, D&D enthusiasts don medieval attire and arm themselves with sword and lance for life-sized play. At the California Institute of Technology, players use the maze of steam tunnels beneath the campus to explore what the University of North Carolina, students have complained that D&D players overload the school's computer with complex game scenarios.
LAST YEAR, when a Michigan State University student vanished for several weeks, friends feared he had been acting out a subterranean DQM quest. He later was found, but refused to say whether the game had had anything to do with his disappearance—adding immeasurably to the game's mystique.
David Akin, a local enthusiast,
estimated that 1,000 people in Lawrence
regularly played D&D and that at least
many more had been exposed to the
game.
At the University of Kansas, D&D usually is played around a table.
Necessary equipment for the game includes rule books, several sets of dice and a board of squares resembling an oversized piece of graph paper. These necessities can be purchased for less than $25, but additional equipment can push a D&D investment into the hundreds of dollars.
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS violates the rules of traditionally successful games. It requires more than two players, the rules are not clearly defined and there is no obvious winner or loser.
At least three people are needed to play, although there is no maximum number that can participate. One of the players, the Dungeon Master, acts as referee, conjures up the dungeon map and controls the flow of the game.
The players roll the dice and, depending on their totals, are assigned ratings for the physical and mental attributes of their characters. Ratings form for strength, wisdom, constitution, intelligence, charisma and dexterity.
From these ratings, a good, evil, lawful, chaotic or neutral personality is selected for each character.
PLAYERS ALSO CHOOSE a race (human, dwarf, eelf, or gnailling) and an occupation (fighter, cleric, magic user, mok or thief).
"You get quite attached to your character, and it actually develops a complicated personality," Akin said.
The rewards are treasure, greater strength and magical power, and special equipment, all of which can be used during the next game.
This motley crowd of knights, wizards, monks and thieves then sets off on an imaginary odyssey through the hazardous labyrinth of dungeons. Throughout the journey, the group must encounter and overcome imaginary monsters, sidestep deadly traps and solve complex riddles.
Dungeons and Dragons first was marketed in 1974 by its inventor, Gary Gygax, a 42-year-old shoe repairman from Lake Geneva, Wis. Today, the game grosses more than $2 million in sales annually.
Mary Micheen, owner of Adventure,
A Bookstore, 1010 Massachusetts, said she was fighting a losing battle to keep her store stocked with D&D instruction manuals and metal figures depicting the heroes and objects used in the game.
"PEOPLE ARE COMING to me from all over the Midwest for D&D equipment," she said.
Akin said the vicarious excitement available from D&D was one of the chief reasons for its success.
Duo really sings blues
Staff Reporter
By MARK PITTMAN
Lee McBee was late. The show was scheduled to begin in a half-hour, and Bill Lynch, his partner in the blues duo of Lynch & McBee, was beginning to
Lyme made a phone call. McBee had been sacked out on his living room couch. Within 15 minutes the blues harpist was groggy making his way downstairs to the 7th Spirit Cell Clerk, harpist St. T., storing armbands of equipment.
The Cellar is the appropriate setting for an outbreak of the blues. That low-down feeling just seems to overcome you when the top of your head is shaken, and when you have to wedge through drunks and cigarette smoke to find a table.
THESE BOYS take a laid-back approach to their music. They play the "bloos," which rhymes with booze, and they sing "night" that exactly what a body needs.
You won't find any heavy political statements or any coining love ballads from these guys. The blues are belted with more feeling than thought and they simply confirm what you already knew: Life is a bitch.
The blues, Lynch & McBee style, are not those crawlin' Mississippi delta blues. They lean more to the Chicago-style urban electric blues that grin in the face of adversity and leave you a damned slick happier at the end of a stop tapping just long enough to order a drink between numbers.
McBee is one of the best harmonica players in the Midwest. His swooping melodic lines fill in the gaps between Lynch's guitar strokes. His face contours as he bends reeds; he resembles some crazed Buddha on stage.
McBEE'S VOICE sounds a file on wet concrete, and the blues come out from somewhere below the belt. He must wear mike and wails away on his blues musk.
Lynch comes on as a much more controlled singer, but with equal intensity. His guitar serves as rhythm section and is the only web that keeps McBee within the song's framework. Lynch complains that the duo arrangement won't let him play lead guitar, but with the addition of a bass and a drummer to the line-up next week, that problem should be solved.
"It doesn't really matter what you're playing as long as you get into it," he said. "It's easy to play here in Lawrence the rest of your life, but it's good place to get an act together. The way it is very receptive to different things.
The four-piece band will open Aug. 12 for the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
"I enjoy this as much as anything I've done," Lynch said Sunday. Lynch, who has played rock and jazz, is the quintetist for the local band Fast Break.
Besides, McBee says, the Midwest needs a blues band.
"You have the ability to become almost anything you want to become," he said. "You have the ability to be an individual who can bend steel bars in his bars hands as a fighter, who can warp the fabric of the universe as a vessel, who can join other person as a cleric, who can pick locks with regular expertise as a trakf."
"You can make your character almost anything you want within the parameters of the game."
Harry Kroeger, a 41-year-old self-proclaimed fanatic of the game who doubles as a research assistant for the KU department of petroleum engineering, explained that the ultimate success of the subterranian trip was dependent on a player's intention and ability to cooperate with and integrate his skills with the other members of the group.
CHARACTERS CAN BE killed in a skirmish with the Berserkers, turned to stone by the gaze of the Medusa or even dissolved by the Grey Ooze.
"There is no absolutely correct way to get through the dungeon," Kroeger said. "You have to do something along almost in the game. It is a matter of using your brain to figure your way out of a situation by knowing what fight, when to talk and when to run."
The dungeon is largely a cerebral journey, he said, with no limit to how far a character can advance or what adventures a character can experience.
There are 15 members, including graduate students, secretaries, construction workers, professor and teacher. The D&D club to which Kroeger belongs.
Rex Hargis, Lawrence senior, said he played D&D to relieve tension and aggression.
"Sometimes I play Dungeons and Dragons because I just have to kill something," he said.
TED FAUCHER, an avid player who also holds a doctorate degree in psychology from the University of
"One of America's first steps toward escapism came with the radio," he said. "Then vision was added and we took a trip to the vision. The next step is participation."
Kansas, said the game served as a participative step toward escapism.
Akin said that D&D was a tremendous teaching tool for gifted children because it could expand their creativity and decision-making ability.
"Dungoes and Dragons allows us a chance to let the id and the supergoose loose and see what happens. We can use aggressions by taking on an alternative identity that society normally would not allow. We can leave behind our problems and meet fiennish and sociologists who support that society has "protected us from."
"You can't teach creativity," he said. "You only can give a child a chance to develop it. D&D is an excellent learning tool because of its instant payoff. Successful, creative solutions to situations are instantly rewarded, but the wrong decision can mean instant death to your character."
Bogarts' darts mix competition, friendships in popular pastime
By KATHY BRUSSELL Staff Reporter
The player takes careful aim through clouds of cigarette smoke.
One quick flick of the arm and the little missile, its needle-sharp point gleaning over the harsh lights, goes streaking toward the target.
The missile is right on the money.
If the missile is right on the money:
"All right, Chris! That's a clean bull's-eye!" yells a spectator to break the tension.
The game is darts. The place is Bogarts, 207 W. Eighth, the one and only true dart bar in Lawrence.
DURING THE LAZY summer months, dart shooters to Bogarts. As might be expected, it is a little different from any bar in the city.
The walls are covered with old baby pictures and posters of faded movie stars. The most prominent poster is, of course, Humphrey Bogart.
No hard rock-n-roll or disco music is found in Borgarts juggars. Instead it offers a selection of old, but still beautiful music from country or early rock-n-roll music.
The main drinking area opens to the left of the entrance into a second room that is dominated by a 5-by-10 foot mirror and another famous face, Marilyn Monroe.
This is where the competition takes place.
Three boards for serious play are hung along one wall, and a practice board is kept in a rear corridor. Above the two boards is an alcove for dart teams placed by the bar.
THE PLAYERS LINE up to pay the $2 entry fee and place bots on the first game. Winnings will not be huge, but the players do not complain. The top four finishers in the tourney win prizes of $25, $12, $6 and $3.
Any effort to characterize the typical dart shooter would be difficult because each has a unique style and personality. The police department, known as Police Department, has been playing darts for three years and is one of Bogarts' longest-standing custom
He said no one person could be called the dart champion of Lawrence, but the man he called was a skilled player. He said the two were Heller; his son-in-law, Mark Walters; Ric Miller, a former Lawrence resident and former head coach of Chris Waters, Topeka, sophomore.
"If I was gonna bet on someone week in and week out, I'd bet on those four," Haller said.
"But each shooter has his good weeks and his bad weeks."
RIC MILLER, a founder of dart competition in Lawrence, said dart throwing was popular because of the skill involved in competition generated by the game.
"Also, it's relatively easy to pick up. The money's good and it's a good way to get to know people," he said.
Dart teams from Bogarts compete in a league organized by the Kansas City State University three league teams to compete against 33 team sponsors by bars in Kansas
League play is on Monday nights and the Bogarts teams alternate between playing in Lawrence and in Kansas City.
League night at Bogarts is highspirited and often rowdy.
"Likeler skating it, it's not as easy as it looks at first, but with enough practice, almost anyone can become a dart player." Waters said.
Practice is essential, Bogarts dart shooters say, but beyond that some say no natural ability is required to master the game.
BEGINNING THROWERS who want to learn the game would probably feel overwhelmed in the Wednesday night competition, Waters said.
He advised beginners to come any other night. Tuesday night is novice night.
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